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Car Maker Land Rover Found Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking

Posted on the 19 August 2013 by Worldwide @thedomains

The car maker Jaguar/Land Rover Has been found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name MountainRovers.com.

The domain name was  owned and used by the domain holder since 1998.

The domain name holder did not file a response to the UDRP

Not only did the one person National Arbitration Forum panel find that Land Rover guilty of RDNH it found that claim was barred by the legal doctrine of Laches.

The one man panel said:

“Complainant was a little too glib in its submission of the WHOIS information to this Panel.  Complainant somehow forgot to include the registered owner’s name in the WHOIS material, although that is very easy for the Panel to determine…by looking at the top the Complaint.  Mountain Rovers, Inc. registered the disputed domain name and Respondent is clearly commonly known by that name.  Complainant has failed to prove its case under Policy ¶4(c)(ii). 

It should be noted Respondent has been actually using this disputed domain since February 12, 1998, all without objection until March 16, 2012.  Certainly Complaint is guilty of latches by allowing Respondent to use the disputed domain without objection for 5,146 days.  All during that time, Respondent was acquiring rights to the disputed domain name.  This Panel has held rights can be fairly quickly obtained by bona fide use (Policy ¶4(c)(i)):

Complainant certainly knew all of this when it filed this Complaint, which was clearly unfounded from the moment it was filed.  How could Complainant possibly think it could prevail on the issue of whether or not Respondent had rights to the domain when Respondent is actually known by the domain name?  It couldn’t.  While others might argue this Panel’s rulings on other points could not be anticipated, any Panel worth its salt would have found Respondent had rights under Policy ¶4(c)(ii).  Complainant has engaged in a clear case of reverse domain name hijacking.”


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